Requiem
by Hanako3
Summary: a church, a coffin, two boys, a dead man, a woman... love and death mingled together


Pairing: Harry/Draco  
  
Rating: PG 14  
  
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling. Harry and Draco aren't mine (what a pity!). If they were Harry Potter would be a slash story (and I would be very rich). No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.   
  
Notes: Thank you to all my precious friends in general (Jossi, Sarràh, Lu) and to Alice and Giò in particular. This fiction is unbetaed (maybe because I don't have a beta reader…''').  
  
thanks also to all readers.  
  
Pleas: Reviews would be nice.   
  
Requiem  
  
Immortality  
  
I make my journey   
  
Through eternity   
  
I keep the memory   
  
Of you and me inside  
  
Immortality - Celine Dion –  
  
The cathedral was wide and dark, under the windows long and narrow stripes of light were lighting up the marble pavement.  
  
Candles were shining in the corners, little flickering and hesitant fires.   
  
In the air was still the whisper of prayers.   
  
In every dark part was echoing the indistinct sound of a Requiem and the voices of the choir were filling the great room with modulated, lengthened, moulded words free to slip away.  
  
They were sounds able to fill of meaning empty spaces, wide cathedrals with glass stained windows and candles and white flowers and whispered words and a thousand year old books.  
  
In his chest, Harry knew, there was a bigger emptiness, but it was an empty room that no song was able to fill.  
  
No song, no person, nothing could, maybe only that boy over there, standing up, composed, in front of a coffin.  
  
He could, sure, but he never would.  
  
Harry knew this too.  
  
That boy had made his choice and because of this now, under the sleeve of the black robe, on his arm, slightly above his elbow, there was a dark mark of shame.   
  
In the hand of the woman near him there was instead a white flower.  
  
In front of him was his father, lying close eyed in an ebony coffin.  
  
Also the coffin was dark.  
  
Instead the flower was white.  
  
Boy's hair was fair like silver, his skin was pale, his lips pinched.  
  
The woman was crying, fingers clenched around the flower stem, as if she was clinging to it in order to don't fall down.  
  
There wasn't a priest in front of them; there was no one with them in that silent wake, only the choir singing the Requiem and a raven-haired young man hidden behind a column.   
  
There was a crying mother, a murderer son, a dead father, an orphan that was staring; in his own way everyone had been betrayed and the darkness was covering them like a blanket useless to warm you up as much as you wrap it around you.   
  
When he was told how it had happened at first Harry didn't believe it, because to believe it would have meant too many things and among those to remember, to hope and to suffer.  
  
He'd never stopped suffering, but the pain in his chest had already become a silent and discreet companion: some times he could swear it wasn't there  
  
He could swear also that he was happy, he could almost believe it, if only he had been able to believe in something anymore.  
  
Yes Harry, I told you, Dumbledore himself said it to me. They killed Lucius Malfoy-  
  
He knew he had friends that were close to him, he knew there were lots of people that would never betray him, but THAT betrayal had been too hard to handle.  
  
When Draco had turned his back on him, and just when he was convinced that nothing could possibly take them apart, is heart had broken.  
  
And now…  
  
They killed Lucius Malfoy. Now Death Eaters are without a leader, Harry. Soon the war will be over. Everything will be like before-  
  
…they were telling him…  
  
Everything will be like before. And it had been Draco Malfoy the one who killed his father. He hadn't betrayed us-  
  
…that actually he had never betrayed them…  
  
He had never betrayed us Harry.   
  
'Oh yeah, actually he had'  
  
Because he hadn't told him anything, he didn't even come to save that 'us' they had built up with so much effort. He had decided, suddenly, that Harry had no right to know, that Harry wasn't so important, that Harry could be sacrificed.  
  
Harry Potter, Hero of the Wizarding World, who had a lightining-bolt scar on his forehead and oh so many scars on his heart that no one could count.  
  
One for every memory of him, one for every word that had been a lie.  
  
Maybe, according to the others there had been no betrayal, but in his opinion scars were yet there with the emptiness that could not be filled and the tears that were blurring his vision.  
  
Everything will be like before  
  
'No, Hermione, nothing will be like before.'  
  
He shouldn't be there, spying someone who did not care for him.  
  
But there had been that note written in a hurry which had been owled him that morning.  
  
There was no signature, just the name of the church and a time.  
  
Just the same he had recognized the handwriting instantly, even after three years.   
  
He had hated himself for not having forgotten it and he had swore that he was not going to that appointment.  
  
But now he was there.  
  
'Just to see him, just to look that bastard in the eyes one last time'  
  
And he knew perfectly well that he was lying to himself, because that would never be enough, not after everything had happened, not after everything they had gone through.  
  
Draco was listening in silence to the broken sobs of his mother.  
  
He'd have wanted to shout to her to stop, to tell her she shouldn't be crying her eyes out over a man who wouldn't have hesitated to kill her if that would have made him gain just a little more power.  
  
But she was going on, holding a lily in her hand.  
  
The music of the choir was coming from far; the coffin in front of him did not signify anything for him anymore, as the body inside it.  
  
Things had stopped having sense a long time before, probably in the very moment Harry had shouted "Go away".  
  
No, he was wrong, he hadn't shouted, he had whispered it, but to him it had been a scream.  
  
A curse.  
  
Six letters.  
  
Three syllables.  
  
All the hatred he had felt in his voice, which at the time was probably al least part love, now was surely nothing more than resentment and scorn.  
  
He had sent him a note, but he knew he wouldn't have come; he had betrayed knowing that he was betraying, choosing not to tell him anything, and in that moment it had seemed a good idea.  
  
How stupid he had been, convinced to be able to sort out everything in a moment, to be able to leave Harry out of things for once and don't involve him in the umpteenth dangerous and desperate action, persuaded that the plan would have worked leaving out all the uncertain variables.  
  
Uncertain variables, being feelings, being Harry.   
  
It had worked, Draco smiled, with a smile that didn't touch his lips, didn't reach his eyes.  
  
It was a self- pitying smile; he had fallen so low that even self-pitying had become a routine.  
  
That feeling that could easily have been true love instead had never happened, and this was entirely his fault.  
  
Typical of a Malfoy to sacrifice feelings; he had acted like is father.  
  
'The more I try to be different from him, the more I end up like him'  
  
Draco knew, now, how strong love could be, stronger than will, stronger than reason, immensely stronger than that mark which had been carved in his skin and also stronger than his name.  
  
It had been a tenacious prisoner that had screamed and fought against him; he had needed all his strength to deny it, to push it in the deepest part of himself, in a dark place full of memories and broken dreams, which could cut like pieces of glass.  
  
Draco turned slightly on the left, with no particular reason, maybe just to silence his mother, maybe because he'd felt something. He turned and he saw him.  
  
Candles were sparkling dimly in the shadows and the darkness seemed to be eating them, but the tears that stained the cheeks of the boy were shining like Unicorn blood.  
  
Harry noticed he had been seen and seemed to want to back out, but instead he remained still.  
  
Draco started to walk slowly.  
  
His mother let the flower fall when her son passed her over, touching her with the edges of his black cloak.  
  
The two boys looked at each other for the first time or maybe the last, after so much time it seemed a thousand years. It seemed entire lives, which had started and finished, but had never had meaning nor aim.  
  
They simply had been.  
  
"You've come" said the blond, but there was no astonishment in his voice, just fear and expectation.  
  
"I shouldn't have" replied the other, but with no regret, just fear and expectation.  
  
Draco would have wanted to say a thousand things, I'm sorry, I can explain, I didn't want to hurt you, You're important to me, I want you back with me, Please forgive me, but instead he said "I never stopped loving you".  
  
Harry would have wanted to reply many things, Neither did I, I've always been hoping you would come back, why did you do that to me, I loathe you, I don't want to see you never again, Please clasp me in your arms, but instead he said "You killed your father".  
  
It seemed they were making different speeches, each one lost in a private monologue.  
  
"Yes, it was the right thing to do."  
  
Harry closed his eyes "It was right to leave me too, wasn't it?  
  
Draco took another step. "In that moment I thought it was the best thing to do".  
  
"You're a coward".  
  
"I've never pretended to be brave. The Gryffindors are the courageous and full of good-feelings ones."  
  
"Even Gryffindors can be scared". Harry's eyes were still closed.  
  
"No, heroes are never scared".  
  
It was just like telling a bedtime story to a child. No one had ever read a story to Harry, but he was sure that all stories should be starting with "Once upon a time there was a strong and brave hero who was never scared of anything."  
  
"I'm scared"  
  
"Of what?"  
  
Silence.  
  
A sigh.  
  
"Of us. Of what has never been and never will be."  
  
Draco understood and lifted up a hand to stroke Harry's cheek still wet with tears.  
  
Harry didn't move, he didn't lean into the touch, nor he backed away. He only opened his eyes.  
  
"Didn't that Phoenix Dumbledore keeps as a pet teach you that sometimes things just reborn from their ashes?"  
  
Harry nodded.  
  
The music was dying and darkness seemed to be again the only master of those empty stone rooms.  
  
A woman was crying in front a black coffin, at her feet a white lily she hadn't the strength to pick up.  
  
In the shadow of a column two boys were joining their lips in a trembling kiss, that was hopeful and disillusioned at the same time.  
  
In a corner far away a girl was lighting up a candle and that faint flame begun immediately to sent away the shadows.  
  
The song re-echoed one more time, the hymn for the dead, those who never come back, but also the hymn for those who try again and never give up.  
  
Requiem aeterna dona eis Domine,  
  
et lux perpetua luceat eis   
  
requiescant in pace, Amen  
  



End file.
